Affinity Designer and Photo for Mac receive big 1.6 update including free limited-time content bundles

Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer, two of the best creative-minded applications available on the Mac, are receiving major updates today to increase performance and add new features.

The apps, which are beloved by creative designers due to their no-compromise feature set and subscription-free pricing model, both receive performance improvements, which include a Metal 2 accelerated view and macOS High Sierra optimization. There’s also a new light UI option for users to select from.

For a limited time until November 16th, app developer Serif is providing buyers with bonus content for both apps, which include new textures for Affinity Photo, and a pro brush pack for Affinity Designer. more…

Analysts expecting Apple’s Q4 revenue to be bang in the middle of company’s forecast

Apple is due to report its fiscal Q4 (calendar Q3) earnings later today, and Wall Street analysts expect the company to report revenue bang in the middle of the company’s guidance.

Perhaps reflecting the fact that it was difficult even for Apple to judge how many people would buy the iPhone 8 in September versus holding out for the iPhone X, the company gave unusually wide guidance this time around …

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ACLU raises privacy concerns over app developer access to facial expressions on iPhone X

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has raised privacy concerns about developer access to the facial expressions of iPhone X users. In particular, they say that Apple allows developers to capture facial expression data and store it on their own servers.

When the iPhone X was launched, Apple was careful to stress that the 3D face recognition model used by Face ID was stored only on the phone itself. The data is never transferred to Apple servers. But the ACLU says that app developers are allowed to transmit and store some face data …

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